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Pickwick Papers

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Charles Dickens wrote The Pickwick Papers in his early 20s, but the writing is first rate and as witty as any seasoned author could have done in his place! Like many of Dickens's works, Pickwick was published in monthly installments, or "numbers" as they were called then. Although Dickens originally intended to end the story at the twentieth number, the popularity of the series (and the resultant income) convinced Dickens to double the length to forty numbers. The end result is a large offering that'll take you a while to get through (~750 pages in the excellent Penguin edition, which I read).

Despite its length, Pickwick never tries your patience. It's delightfully humorous from beginning to end. Samuel Pickwick is the bumbling, middle-aged, wealthy namesake of this novel. He's the leader of a small group of single men that gets into all sorts of mischief, both physical and social. Booze is rampant. Apparently liquor back then was much more a part of daily life than today; everywhere these guys go they party and get drunk. They get into trouble with the law, women, unsavory characters, and more.

Characterization is superb. This is one of the few novels I've read for which I can actually say that I got to know the characters. In most books I've read, the characters remain two-dimensional and the plot is what carries the story. In Pickwick, the *characters* are the essence of the story and the novel wouldn't be memorable at all if a lesser author were attempting to breathe life into these people.

The Penguin edition includes a decent collection of endnotes to help explain unfamiliar portions of the text. Nevertheless, there were still quite a few words and concepts peculiar to early 19th century England that I didn't grasp. This edition also has maps of southern England and a key to the specific locations that the Pickwickians visit. In addition, two appendices reprint some of the announcements and prefaces that Dickens wrote in relation to the work.

Highly recommended, particularly if you enjoy classic literature! Dickens's later works overshadow this gem due to their maturity, but Pickwick beats them all in enthusiasm, humor, and wit.

I have absolutely no doubts whatsoever that Charles Dickens, if he lived today, would still classify as an author's author. He's a master of all the things that make for great writing and storytelling. Dickens has an ear for dialogue most authors would kill their own mothers to possess. He also is a master of creating vivid scenery, another sign of excellence essential to great writing and one which many authors lack. Finally, but not least in importance, Dickens knows character development. He REALLY knows how to develop intriguing characters, to the point where many of his books spawned figures that have become literary archetypes. Not bad for a guy who grew up in extremely adverse circumstances. He even spent some time in a factory sticking labels on bottles after his father's imprisonment for debt. Most people wouldn't recover from such poverty, but Dickens did. He went on to a successful career in journalism before settling down as an author of serial novels. This format, which allowed Dickens to write and release his stories piecemeal, made him a great success with the public. The anticipation for the latest chapter or two of his stories often led to near riots. Not many writers can duplicate this feat today.

"The Pickwick Papers" is one of Dickens's earliest works, written when the author was a mere twenty-four years old. You wouldn't know his age by reading the story, though. "Pickwick" is a work that delivers healthy doses of sophisticated humor, keen observations on pressing social issues, romance, and a mature knowledge of human behavior. It's of course fiction, although Dickens presents the story as a true series of events documented by the "Pickwick Club," a social organization founded by retired businessman and all around merry fellow Samuel Pickwick. In the 1820s, Pickwick and several friends embark on a series of journeys through Southern England, a journey that lasts for roughly two years. Ostensibly, the businessman and his fellows take the trips to learn more about their country. Instead, their travels turn into a series of often hilarious events mixed with a few serious scrapes. Pickwick must constantly save individuals from the machinations of one Alfred Jingle, an itinerant scalawag with a penchant for wooing women for their money. In between these adventures, our hero must contend with a lawsuit filed by a former female employee who thought he wanted to marry her, save his friends from numerous imbroglios involving members of the opposite sex, survive a stay in a debtor's prison, and live through a couple hundred other adventures both major and minor.

If I had to list one overarching theme I enjoyed most about "The Pickwick Papers," it's got to be the humor. This book is one of the funniest things I've read in ages. We're talking laugh out loud and laughing later when remembering scenes from the book funny. Much of the humor centers on Pickwick's manservant Sam Weller, a guy prone to uttering some of the most hilarious sayings you'll likely see in any book. Weller's father is even more amusing, and when father and son sit down to write a letter to a lovely young woman who's caught Sam's eye, well, prepare to hold your sides. Also worth a belly laugh or two is the chapter where Pickwick and his friends visit the town of Eatanswill in time to witness the results of a contentious local election. Dickens's observations about party politics and media manipulation are not only highly amusing, but also relevant to our own age. And who can forget the courtroom scenes where the lawyer makes Pickwick, this kindly old gentleman who wouldn't hurt a fly, look like an absolute monster? I could go on and on. If you read this book without cracking up, check your pulse because you're probably dead.

Another element of the book I enjoyed concerns Dickens's ability to write scenes that simply overflow with the joy of living. A lengthy chapter describing Pickwick's stay with some country friends over Christmas serves as an excellent example. The sheer bliss of this part of the book is infectious, as Dickens makes us marvel at the simple delight of spending a few days in the company of good friends, good food, and good entertainment. On the other hand, the author isn't above indulging in an activity he's become famous for, namely showing the reader the depths of human suffering. There is far less misery in "The Pickwick Papers" than there is in "Oliver Twist," to cite one example, but it's still here. The debtor's prison in which Pickwick stays for a time provides the author with a perfect forum for attacking England's tradition of imprisoning those unfortunate souls who cannot pay their creditors. I marvel at how Dickens can balance these two extremes in the space of a single novel. In this way, "The Pickwick Papers" manages to encompass life in both its good and bad aspects.

I read the Penguin Classics edition of "The Pickwick Papers," and I'm glad I did. The supplementary material is copious and helpful more often than not. I didn't care much for the introduction from Robert L. Patten, however, which I thought tried to read too much into the story. I did appreciate the footnotes that help explain the English geography, slang, and popular culture references found throughout the story. Further material provides information on the three illustrators who worked on the story, biographical details of Dickens's life, and even maps tracing Pickwick's myriad travels through the English countryside. Reading "The Pickwick Papers" makes me realize that I've neglected this author's works for far too long. I can't praise this book enough; it's that entertaining and that good. Give it a go as soon as possible!

I don't think I've ever read a novel half as entertaining as The Pickwick Papers. I agree with the reviewer who said that it was as if Dickens had a million jokes that he wanted to get off of his chest. And such wonderful characters! The last part of the book though is more about Mr. Pickwick himself than about the club. He also becomes less of a doofus and more of a lovealbe and sympathetic character as the novel progresses. If you are ever down and feeling depressed then this is the book to read.Sam Weller is one of Dickens greatest characters, the book really comes into its own when he becomes Mr.Pickwicks servent.

Pickwick Papers is a wonderful book, and no doubt much has been written about it in academic and literary circles. But from a layman's perspective, it is simply a fun read. One would almost think it the work of a great master approaching the end of a career, consciously deciding to lay down the heartache of Great Expectations or the martyrdom of A Tale of Two Cities to take a jovial and whimsical jaunt through the English language and the realm of imagination. Yet the bumbling and somehow delightful misadventures of the Pickwickians fall at the beginning of Dickens' career. Comic relief is offered well before Hard Times sets in.

Take an independently wealthy, magnanimous old fellow and surround him with a group of close friends. Send them together on a journey of desire to explore the world about them, meet new people, and experience the fullness of life, and you essentially have the plot of Pickwick Papers. The plethora of characters Dickens introduces along the way add considerable color to the narrative, not only because they come from such a vast array of backgrounds, but because they themselves are colorful in their own right:

The first and most obvious example might be that of Mr. Alfred Jingle, the loquacious vagabond rapscallion who rescues the Pickwickians from an altercation with a feisty coach driver. One of Mr. Pickwicks cohorts, Mr. Snodgrass, receives a blow to the eye during the incident, after which Mr. Jingle is pleased to suggest the most efficacious remedies: "Glasses round-brandy and water, hot and strong, and sweet, and plenty-eye damaged, sir? Waiter! Raw beef-steak for the gentleman's eye-nothing like raw beef-steak for a bruise, sir; cold lamp-post very good, but lamp-post inconvenient-damned odd, standing in the open street half an hour with your eye against a lamp-post-eh-very good-ha! ha!" While Pickwick reads the legend of Prince Bladud by candlelight, we find this description of King Hudibras: "A great many centuries since, there flourished, in great state, the famous and renowned Lud Hudibras, king of Britain. He was a mighty monarch. The earth shook when he walked-he was so very stout. His people basked in the light of his countenance-it was so red and glowing. He was, indeed, every inch a king. And there were a good many inches of him too, for although he was not very tall, he was a remarkable size round, and the inches that he wanted in height he made up in circumference." The young surgeon, Benjamin Allen, is described as "a coarse, stout, thick-set young man, with black hair cut rather short and a white face cut rather long [...] He presented altogether, rather a mildewy appearance, and emitted a fragrant odour of full-flavoured Cubas." Dickens notes that the casual visitor to the Insolvent Court "might suppose this place to be a temple dedicated to the Genius of Seediness" and whose vapors are "like those of a fungus pit." Seated in this luxuriant ambience, we find an attorney, Mr. Solomon Pell, who "was a fat, flabby pale man, in a surtout which looked green one minute and brown the next, with a velvet collar of the same chameleon tints. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side, as if Nature, indignant with the propensities she observed in him in his birth, had given it an angry tweak which it had never recovered." A final sample from a list of worthy characters too long to mention might be Mr. Smangle, the boisterous whiskered man whom Pickwick encounters in debtors prison: "This last man was an admirable specimen of a class of gentry which never can be seen in full perfection but in such places; they may be met with, in an imperfect state, occasionally about the stable-yards and public-houses; but they never attain their full bloom except in these hot-beds, which would almost seem to be considerately provided by the legislature for the sole purpose of rearing them [...] There was a rakish vagabond smartness and a kind of boastful rascality about the whole man that was worth a mine of gold."

The book itself is a goldmine full of textures, personas, venues, and idiosyncrasies of a bygone age. These are delight to behold, as the reader is thus invited to enjoy experience and descriptive beauty for their own sakes. Plot largely takes a backseat to the development of relationships, which can be seen as a myriad of subplots contributing to a never-ending story. Numerous vignettes which are incidental to the narrative add another level of richness, and it seems clear that Dickens offers them for an enjoyment all their own. There is something of "l'art pour l'art" throughout the whole work which expresses a love of language and a love of human nature. As Dickens might have summed it up, "All this was very snug and pleasant."

Having never read any Dickens before - and unaware this was his maiden effort - I was hooked from the first few pages. The benevolent Mr. Pickwick, with his faithful sidekicks, experiences Victorian England as a well-to-do citizen. While the bulk of this novel deals with the "softer" side of society, the hard-edged aspects of the era are nonetheless acknowledged. With memorable characters, marvelous misadventures, subtle comedic touches, and an occasional suprise around the corner, this novel holds it's own as a "classic." My only "Pickwick" regret was waiting this long (24 yrs. old) to read it. This book will undoubtedly serve as a springboard for ALL of Charles Dickens' works.

Joyousness saturates this book. In a spare moment, you can grab it, read a page or two, and your whole day feels brighter. Slapstick comedy and wordplay and satire abound -- it's as if Dickens's chest must have been bursting with a thousand jokes, and this book gave him the opportunity. You come away feeling as if you'd spent a week in the country among friends, laughing.

It is interesting that both William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens began their writing careers with a comedy. Charles Dickens is best known for his harsh portrayals of Victorian England (especially in "A Christmas Carol"). But this 1st book shows that he can draw hilarious comedy as well. We meet the Pickwick Club. (Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Snodgrass, Mr. Tupman, and Mr. Winkle.) They are a bumbling group, but they are benevolent. Undoubtedly, Mr. Pickwick was based on Charles Dickens's father. The great Charles Dickens's father was a warm hearted and caring man, but he was also unlucky. He did in fact spend time in the debtors's prison. Well, moving on, the Pickwick club meets the comical villain Mr. Jingle. Mr. Jingle gets the Pickwick club into various sorts of trouble. He stops a would be wedding between Mr. Tupman and Rachael Wardle. (Jingle himself wants Rachael's fortune.) Well, Jingle shows himself to be good at double talk and alienates the 2. While his plot fails, he tricks Pickwick into appearing in a girls' school after hours. You'll probably notice that this book (like "Moby Dick") is full of digressions. We hear unrelated tales from different characters. (To some, this is a welcome technique while others find it annoying. Though the tale of Gabriel Grub does foreshadow the phenomenal "Christmas Carol.") Moving on, in a well worded passage Mr. Pickwick leads his landlady Widow Bardell into thinking he wants to marry her, when in fact he was just considering hiring a man servant. And of course Mr. Pickwick goes on trial for not keeping a promise of marriage. (Charles Dickens himself actually did many live readings of this chapter.) While we know Mr. Pickwick is not guilty, he ends up being charged 750 pounds which he refuses to pay. And of course, he (like Charles Dickens's father goes to prison). While he can afford the money, he refuses to pay because he is innocent. The scenes of the prison break the comedy. Even Widow Bardell is thrown in prison by Dodson and Fogg. But all is not lost. Pickwick's servant Weller comes to his aid. And Mr. Pickwick realizes that he must leave prison to help Mr. Winkle. (Mr. Winkle has married Arabella, and her brother is not so happy about it.) Mr. Pickwick pays what he must to exit the prison and he of course comes to the aid of his friend Mr. Winkle. The story ends in utter happiness. Mr. Pickwick even forgives Mr. Jingle. Perhaps the greatest thing about this book is that it is NOT ONLY hilarious comedy, but it shows how true friends stick by one another, and it even takes it to the next level by showing the wonders of fogiveness. This book drove England Pickwick mad when it came out. (There were Pickwick coats, hats, cigars, candy, and canes.) Need we ask why?

If your only experience of Charles Dickens involves never-ending readings of Great Expectations or Oliver Twist in high school literature class, then you may be surprised to find that Dickens was a master of wit as well as woe. In The Pickwick Papers all aspects of the amazing talent of Charles Dickens are on display. Through the adventures and ramblings of Samuel Pickwick, Esq. and his companions Messrs. Tupman, Winkle, and Snodgrass, we are given an intimate look at 19th Century England, from her small country towns to the dark heart of London's debtor's prison. The characters and places are vibrant, the story alive with humor and pathos. Continual feasting, fun, and holiday parties with friends share the pages of this story with tales of poverty, abuse, and neglect; all set down by the hand of a master story teller and observer of human nature.

Immense in size, this early Dickens novel is just as large in providing pleasurable reading; I didn't want it to end. Dickens published it in 1837 when he was 25 years old; impressive. His range of characters, episodic plot, lively dialogue, humorous situations, never lags. Although not as weighty as that other great laughing satire, Don Quixote, Pickwick is in the same genre and should be read as a thematic companion to that great Spanish novel.

Dickens loves the tale, I mean, telling the tale; it is all in the storytelling. Although it never dips into philosophy, science, morality, politics, or other pithy topics, Dicken's vast canvas ranges over the quixotic turns that happen in life. Pickwick, the title character, is completely lovable in his formality, politeness, and cordiality, making him a perrenially memorable character.

Read this novel, friends, and give it to your friends who love to read. Or to anyone who loves the rich tapestry of mature storytelling, Dickens-style. This was the first novel to put him into popularity, and I see why.

The Oxford edition (edited by Kinsely) of Pickwick only reprints a few of the illustrations (Kinsley is turning in his grave!). The illustrations to this novel are half the point of it. Buy the Penguin or another, fully illustrated edition instead.